The comparison of linen vs seersucker begins with a small correction. They are not the same kind of thing. Linen is a fibre, drawn from the stem of the flax plant. Seersucker is a weave, a way of constructing cloth so that it puckers, and it is traditionally made of cotton. To set one against the other is a little like comparing oak with a dovetail joint. Yet the question is a fair one, because both exist for the same purpose. Each is a natural answer, centuries old, to the problem of being dressed in heat.

Seersucker takes its name from the Persian shir o shakar, milk and sugar, for the alternation of smooth and rough in its surface. It reached Europe through the trade with India. On the loom, groups of warp threads are held at different tensions, so that when the cloth is finished some stripes lie flat and others gather into a permanent ripple. The effect is structural. It does not wash out and it cannot be ironed away.

That ripple is the whole idea. The puckered stripes lift the cloth off the body, so that only part of the surface touches the skin and air moves through the channels between. It is an ingenious piece of engineering in cotton. Linen arrives at the same result by a different road. The flax fibre is naturally stiff and smooth, so the cloth stands away from the skin without any help from the weave; and the fibre itself takes up moisture readily and releases it to the air quickly. With seersucker the cooling is in the construction. With linen it is in the material.

The difference is felt most in damp heat. A cotton fibre holds moisture for longer than flax does, and on a humid day a cotton cloth, however cleverly woven, stays wet a little longer than a linen one. Linen dries quickly on the body and on the line. This is not a criticism of cotton, which is a fine natural fibre with a softness linen takes years to acquire. It is simply the particular gift of flax, and the reason linen has been the cloth of hot coasts since antiquity. The Journal compares the two fibres directly in linen and cotton.

On the matter of creasing, the two take opposite positions and both are honest. Seersucker is, in effect, creased in advance: its texture disguises whatever a day of wear adds, which is why it travels so obligingly. Linen creases openly, at the elbow, the lap and the small of the back, and makes no attempt to conceal it. Some find that a difficulty. Others regard the soft fold of a worn linen shirt as its particular signature, evidence of a natural fibre behaving as one. Neither view is wrong. It is a question of temperament.

The two cloths also carry different associations. Seersucker is bound up with a particular tradition: the blue-and-white striped summer suit of the American South, the club, the garden party. It has charm and a certain wit, and it is always recognisably itself. Linen is quieter and less specific. It has no single place or period; it is as much at home on a Greek harbour as in a Gulf city or at a table in Provence. A linen shirt in a plain colour says very little, which is its usefulness. It can be dressed toward formality or away from it by what is worn with it.

Time treats them differently as well. Seersucker looks much the same on its hundredth wearing as on its first. Linen changes. With each wash the cloth softens, the colour settles and the hand becomes more supple, so that a linen garment in its fifth summer is more agreeable than a new one. Flax is also a strong fibre, stronger wet than dry, and a well-made linen shirt lasts for many years. Both cloths, when woven of pure natural fibre, return to the earth at the end of that life.

PP works in linen, and for the core of the collection in certified Belgian linen, woven in Belgium from European flax. The choice follows from the house's conviction that the fibre should do the work. A Laos short sleeve linen shirt in Oyster, a Bliss linen shirt in Vanille, a pair of PP casual linen trousers in Oatmeal: plain weave, plain colour, seashell and walnut buttons, and nothing else needed to keep a man cool. For women, the Amelia linen dress shirt and the PP linen blouse rest on the same principle. They are found in the men's and women's linen collections.

Which, then, to choose. For a striped summer suit with a sense of occasion and of humour, seersucker has no rival, and there is no reason to look for one. For the shirt worn every warm day of the year, to breakfast and to dinner, on the boat and in the city, linen is the more complete cloth. A considered wardrobe may hold both. It will reach for the linen more often.

Linen and Cotton  ·  Linen and Chambray  ·  Does Linen Crease?